Room CC1 The event is preceded by the high-level Leaders Dialogue on Monday 8 April, 17:00 -17:45. This meeting will focus on mobilising the private sector to incentivise quality infrastructure. It includes leaders from the Blue Dot Network Sterring Committee and the private sector. The Blue Dot Network (BDN) provides an internationally recognised certification to assist countries in pursuing investments that maximise the positive economic, social, environmental and development impact of infrastructure. The BDN network will be officially announced ahead of the Infrastructure Forum by the OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann together with the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard R. Verma and the Swiss State Secretary for Economic Affairs Helene Budliger Artieda, as well as representatives of all Blue Dot Network member governments. This event is open to all participants of the OECD Infrastructure Forum.

Room CC1 With intensifying climate change, infrastructure is and will be increasingly affected by climate variability and extreme weather events. The resilience of infrastructure is a key determinant of a country’s overall economic and social resilience to climate risks. In addition to safety and security risks for citizens, resilient infrastructure has economic consequences for investors and for governments in terms of repairing or replacing infrastructure, downstream economic costs of infrastructure failures and the use of damaged or unusable infrastructure, leading to lost revenues and contingent liabilities. Speakers will highlight the strong interplay of institutional, policy, regulatory, technical and financial design that is needed to adapt infrastructure to the impacts of climate change and to make investments in climate resilience happen. A new OECD flagship report “Infrastructure for a Climate-Resilient Future” will also be launched in this session.

Room CC1 Developing countries can be particularly vulnerable to natural disasters. Planning, building and managing infrastructure to make it resilient to natural disasters is crucial to ensure that developing countries can achieve sustainable development.   This session focuses on the latest strategies and best practices featured in the first edition of the OECD Compendium of Good Practices on Quality Infrastructure: Building Resilience to Natural Disasters, focusing on the three-pillar approach: PRR (Prevent- React- Rebuild). 

Auditorium Nature-based solutions (NbS) – whether standalone or in complement of grey engineering measures – can reduce infrastructure asset losses and extend their operational life. NbS offer flexibility and adaptability to climate change over time through the natural adaptive capacity of ecosystems, and provide a range of environmental, social, and economic co-benefits. This session will examine country experiences in using NbS for building climate-resilient infrastructure, and the enabling environment to encourage the use of NbS in infrastructure planning, design and maintenance.

Room CC1 New certification schemes and labels such as Blue Dot Network, FAST-Infra Sustainable Infrastructure label, and PIDA Quality label enable infrastructure projects to demonstrate their commitment to sustainability and quality standards, and attract investors who prioritise responsible and sustainable investments. An OECD survey shows that leading private sector investors believe a trusted certification framework can increase infrastructure investments in emerging and developing economies. The session will discuss how certifications can be leveraged to bridge the infrastructure investment gap, and how to ensure consistency, complementarity and interoperability of related frameworks.

Auditorium The effective functioning of telecommunications, energy, transport and water sectors (network/infrastructure sectors) is vital for the delivery of essential services. Flexible and responsive regulation remains as relevant as ever to ensure network sectors remain resilient in the face of shocks and other threats. This session will discuss how the proliferation of new players involved in the provision of the services, technological changes or the challenges linked to climate change are affecting the role of regulators in bolstering network resilience? How can regulators respond to the increasing inter-dependence between network sectors and the interplay with resilience?

Room CC1 Robust, reliable and standardised reporting is critical to coherence with infrastructure standards and ensuring that performance is in accordance with contractual and policy requirements. Without standardised reporting, data collection remains challenging at both the project and collective level. This session will highlight some of the challenges and actions that are needed to move the needle in reporting on the quality and resilience of infrastructure assets.

Auditorium By 2050, the global population living in cities is projected to reach 5 billion, up from 3.5 billion in 2015. Supporting this growth while mitigating and adapting to climate change requires new approaches to support more resilient infrastructure. This session will examine how innovative funding and financing approaches – e.g. land value capture, green bonds, public-private partnerships – can help regional and local governments.

Room CC1 There is a compelling economic case for investing in climate-resilient infrastructure. Unlocking this potential will require concerted efforts to realise the value of enhanced climate resilience. Enhanced collaboration between the public and private sectors will be critical to enable finance to flow at the required scale. This plenary session will share experiences of how climate resilience has been financed, in particular for countries with limited fiscal space and how international investors and donors can support the discussion on improving climate resilience. This plenary session will share experiences of how climate resilience has been financed, in particular for countries with limited fiscal space and how international investors and donors can support the discussion on improving climate resilience.

Room CC1

Room CC1 The interconnectedness and mutual reliance of infrastructure assets across sectors increases in interdependency across critical infrastructure systems when extreme weather conditions occur, making it more vulnerable to a range of stresses and threats.. Interconnectedness extends to sectors like water supply, telecommunications, healthcare where a malfunction in one sector can significantly impact others, and a single point of failure in one sector may trigger disruptions across others, leading to widespread socio-economic consequences. Analysing these interdependencies helps in assessing risks, planning for civil contingencies, and designing resilient infrastructure that can better withstand, minimise and recover from the domino effect of failures. This session will discuss resilience measures fit for the future, including building partnerships across relevant actors, involving communities in planning and decision-making processes, developing business continuity plans to mitigate and respond to disasters, taking more agile regulatory and decision-making approaches, and using new data and technological tools to strengthen monitoring and foresight.

Room CC1 To meet the Paris Agreement targets and respond to the effects of climate change, new investment in resilient, low-emission infrastructure will need to be delivered at a greater pace and scale than in previous decades. In response, countries and international organisations increasingly recognise they need more fit for purpose permitting and land use planning arrangements to meet this challenge. For example, the United States is coordinating its permitting procedures at the Federal and state levels. The European Commission has directed members to reduce permitting timeframes for solar facilities from 4 years down to 3 months, and wind farms from 6-9 years down to 1 year. The United Kingdom’s National Infrastructure Commission has also recommended their Government speed up the permitting of nationally significant infrastructure while New Zealand has developed a fast-track environmental permitting process for renewable energy projects. But there will be challenges to achieving this, such as countries gaining the agreement of local communities who may be impacted by new energy installations. This session focuses on what leading countries are doing to ensure their environmental permitting rules are fit for purpose, while still upholding environmental, cultural and recreational safeguards.

Auditorium Recently announced large-scale investments in infrastructure are set to significantly boost the demand for construction workers, especially in places with large-scale projects. However, the sector is already facing numerous unfilled vacancies, especially in regions and cities with a decline in young people entering the industry. The shift towards sustainable and climate-resilient infrastructure is also creating new skill gaps. If no action is taken, local labour and skills construction shortages may delay projects and drive-up costs. This session looks at how to tackle these shortages effectively, such as by providing better career guidance, opportunities for re-skilling and up-skilling, and investing in digital skills at the local level.

Room CC1 Traditional tools and mechanisms to appraise infrastructure projects are often ill-equipped to consider environmental and climate aspects. This session will look at how to align project assessment with environmental objectives to support green infrastructure investments, in order to strengthen evidence for both mitigation and adaptation measures. Notably, it will provide insights on how to integrate environmental criteria in project planning, appraisal, and prioritisation, considering the entire asset lifecycle. It will also reflect on the role of methodological tools to evaluate costs and benefits, including carbon emissions, climate risks, and other environmental externalities.

Auditorium Tackling climate change means radically transforming our infrastructure basis. Power generation, transport, buildings and industry make up more than 60% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and determine social and economic vulnerability to climate impacts. Achieving a net zero, resilient future requires to scale-up public and private investment in sustainable infrastructure, particularly in fast-growing Asia where the bulk of new infrastructure will be built in the next decade. Planning ministries play a vital role in this effort, as their long-term risk considerations and influential capacity can guide decisions across various sectors. In this session, planning ministry representatives and infrastructure experts from Southeast Asia will discuss effective practices in planning and financing infrastructure amid uncertainty, addressing how climate change resilience can be mainstreamed and promoted in a context of competing priorities. This session is organised by the OECD’s Sustainable Infrastructure Programme in Asia (SIPA), which actively supports countries like Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and other emerging Asian economies in aligning their infrastructure systems with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Room CC1 As climate-related disasters strike with increasing frequency and unpredictability, how should governments engage with those most impacted by disasters? This session will explore how governments have engaged with citizens and stakeholders to re-build infrastructure following disasters with a view to build back better and to build resilience to future disasters. It will also explore how to ensure transparency and accountability for disaster response and recovery, and to engage citizens on the mitigation of infrastructure risks. Finally, it will explore how countries ensure that those most vulnerable to climate risks participate in the decision-making process to build back better. Currently, only 27% of OECD countries mandate outreach to under-represented groups, such as minorities, indigenous communities, and people with disabilities as part of their infrastructure consultation efforts.

Auditorium The LAC region is highly vulnerable to climate change and is one of the top disaster-prone regions in the world, with the average number of extreme climate-related weather events increasing by 62% in the region during 2001-2022, compared to 1980-2000. These disasters resulted in USD 115.2 billion in economic losses. The OECD-LAC Action Plan towards Climate Resilience and Neutrality proposes an integrated approach, oriented towards building more climate-resilient infrastructure. Infrastructure investment needs in the LAC region by 2030 have been estimated at 3.12% of GDP, compared to average investment of 1.8% 2008-2019. This session will discuss how improving the governance of infrastructure projects in the LAC region can better align infrastructure planning, development, and investments with short- and long-term low emission, climate-resilient and inclusive development strategies.

Room CC1 Creating more resilient regions and cities will require substantial investment in local infrastructure. To meet the scale of the task, all levels of government will need to be mobilised. Regional and local governments will have a particularly important role as they are responsible for 69% of climate-significant investment in OECD countries. Given shared responsibilities, coordination across levels of government will be essential to ensure that resources are mobilised effectively. In this high-level plenary session, speakers will examine the emerging coordination structures that are being established to provide more resilient infrastructure in the places where it is most needed.

Room CC1